The Mirror Shattered

 

It is not generally understood, but Western civilization shattered sometime in 1917.

Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. – T.S. Eliot

Before this, the culture was a mirror, in which you could see the face of man. This is Shakespeare’s “Mirror held up to nature.”

Since then, what do you see?

Only a shattered land, a shattered landscape, only shards of mirror reflecting each another’s emptiness.